Study of an Articulated Winglet Mechanism

The recognition that a fixed aircraft design cannot perform optimally across the wide range of flight stages and missions has sparked a great interest in morphing aircraft, able to adapt their configuration to the prevailing conditions in each moment. Many different concepts of morphing wings have been proposed but widespread adoption is hampered by actuation difficulties and reliability and safety concerns. Replacing such all-encompassing wing morphing ideas with smaller, localised geometry changes can overcome these limitations. Wingtip devices are a particularly interesting candidate in that, in spite of their small size and limited loads, they play an important role in the overall wing aerodynamics. Indeed, computational work previously carried out by the authors demonstrated the appeal of adaptive winglets and paved the way for further development of the concept. This paper describes the design, construction and testing of a prototype of the proposed adaptive winglet, with the testing focussing on two major aspects: the actuation capabilities and the system’s dynamic response. The results presented in this paper confirm the viability of the variable orientation winglet design.